


hell hath no fury (like a woman scorned)

by hazy_daisy



Series: blood of zeus character studies [1]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Blood of Zeus (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hera POV, but not literally because that never turns out well for anyone, canon character... death?, going through zeus' affairs because HERA IS RIGHTFULLY ANGRY, i call this one 'hera is hot and did nothing wrong', i guess, i'm here to say: fuck zeus, it starts off more mythology-based but then gets into the events of the show, she deserves better. she's a queen, so. if you're looking for a greek mythology read you might like the beginning ig, spoilers for season one i guess lmao idk why you'd be reading this if you haven't watched it, tagged as ancient greek religion and lore only because the beginning of it Is so much lore, too much incest in the boz tag. time for some Character Studies, unbeta'd we die like electra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:20:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazy_daisy/pseuds/hazy_daisy
Summary: The first time it happens, there is no word to describe what Hera feels.The pain of Zeus’ betrayal is like a burning knife to her heart. She feels rent apart. The pain burns and sizzles like acid under her rib cage until everything that she is is burnt away to nothing.When Hera first finds out, and sees Zeus’ face, her fingers twitch with the urge to gouge those blue eyes from their sockets, to tear at his throat with her teeth. Hera’s talons could dig deep, should she give them the chance, and she thinks that the only kindness she could afford at that moment would be to leave a corpse for her dear carrion birds.
Relationships: Hera/Zeus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hera/Zeus (Blood of Zeus)
Series: blood of zeus character studies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994839
Comments: 78
Kudos: 73





	hell hath no fury (like a woman scorned)

**Author's Note:**

> look i wrote this all in one sitting and posted without rereading you're gonna have to stick with me here
> 
> i'll leave some definitions in the end notes! comment if there's anything you need me to clarify for you.
> 
> i really do want to say that i know that hera's birds, traditionally, are peacocks, but i'm using crows just for continuity with the show. one of these days, my lady, i'll write you something nice with peacocks. argus' legacy deserves better than this.
> 
> i only mention the war with the giants at the very beginning because?? it looks like it's framed as a love story for them? as if it was when they got together? but ares and apollo were already vibing so. not sure what the time frame is there. anyway continue on that's enough of my talking

During the war, he is strong. And kind. And Hera thinks… this man is worthy of being king.

_He always seems to forget, later. That she was queen long before he was ever king._

-

When there is peace, there is happiness. There is Hera, and Zeus, and the feathers of her crows crackle with excitement like static electricity. Hera is the goddess of marriage. She feels the glow of happiness when she is with him like she feels the prayers of her devotees; women pray to her, for advice, for good fortune in their marriages, and she is happy to answer them. She knows what a good marriage is, after all. She’s in one.

Ares is born, and he is perfect. He is strong. He is made of the same stuff as his father; the material of strong men, of kings. Hera holds him, and smiles at him, and basks in the warmth of the baby’s tiny hand around her finger. Hera is the protector of women in childbirth. She knows what it is to bear a child; women pray to her, for assistance, for protection, and she is happy to grant it. She knows the joy of holding a child of one’s own in one’s arms.

Hera is not the goddess of motherhood. The title goes to the titaness Leto—and so does Zeus.

-

The first time it happens, there is no word to describe what Hera feels.

The pain of Zeus’ betrayal is like a burning knife to her heart. She feels rent apart. The pain burns and sizzles like acid under her rib cage until everything that she is is burnt away to nothing. 

When Hera first finds out, and sees Zeus’ face, her fingers twitch with the urge to gouge those blue eyes from their sockets, to tear at his throat with her teeth. Hera’s talons could dig deep, should she give them the chance, and she thinks that the only kindness she could afford at that moment would be to leave a corpse for her dear carrion birds.

Hera is the protector of women in childbirth. At least, she is, until she sees Leto’s round stomach. When Hera sees Leto, she is more vengeance than she is goddess. It is the first time Hera thinks to turn her powers against someone that wasn’t an enemy of the gods. The effort of withholding Leto’s ability to give birth makes her feel sick to her stomach.

Leto is not the one that she hates. The one that she hates is Zeus, but—but—but Hera is the goddess of marriage, and Zeus is her husband. Zeus is king of the gods. Hera is a queen—is _his_ queen, she thinks, at least this early on—and she has a reputation to maintain. She has a love to maintain. She cannot hate her husband. She cannot. All she can do is—suffer—smolder—and push her hate onto somebody else. 

Hera bans Leto from giving birth on land, and she finds a _fucking island_ . Of course she does. By the time Hera’s crows find her, there are twins in Leto’s arms. Hera looks upon the children, a boy with hair golden as the sun and a girl with eyes pale as the moon, and _hates_.

Hera is not the goddess of motherhood. She needs no love for children. She cannot love these bastards, these wailing embodiments of Zeus’ betrayal. 

Zeus insists on bringing them to Olympus; refuses to leave these bundles of Hera’s shame to die, as she wishes, _wishes_ they would. The initial betrayal burned and sliced her into a spiteful, shriveled thing; it is the evidence, living, breathing, talking, that makes Hera want to tear Zeus and then the world apart. 

Zeus apologizes. Hera wants to believe him more than she actually does. She tells herself that he is telling the truth, when he says it will not happen again. She falls into his arms, and he holds her as she weeps, and tells her that she is his queen. That he was a fool. That he repents.

On Olympus, three children call Zeus their father. Only Ares calls Hera _mother_. 

Hera’s heart feels ugly and gnarled in her chest.

-

There is no joy in Hephaestus’ birth. Hera is no happy mother—she has no love to give him. He is ugly, deformed, weak. He is every bit of poison in her relationship with Zeus. She casts him from the mountain and _screams_ out her anguish until her lungs finally collapse.

(It is Zeus who brings him back, of course. If Hera will learn anything about the man he married, it is that he will pretend to wish for the health of the tree and refuse to cut the poisoned shoots.)

-

The circumstances of Athena’s birth are strange, but Hera bears no ill will against her. Hera carries nothing for Athena. Athena is no child of hers, nor of any other woman’s.

Ares complains that Athena dislikes him, and Hera silences him with a glare. 

-

Hera had been happy, before the news of Leto. She has tried to be happy, since. Her smiles are forced, more often than not. Zeus had been kinder, been softer; it had resulted in Hephaestus.

Hera’s anger at the failure that is her second child reflects itself in Zeus’ distance. He draws back, draws away. Tells her that he is spending more time with the children (half of whom are not Hera’s). Hera sees him go, and feels her heart ache for him; she is lonely, lonelier than ever before, and she has no wish to be so miserable.

Hera is the goddess of marriage. She knows how to maintain a relationship. She will not be the one to drive Zeus away, with her anger, with her vitriol. She decides to reach out. Hera is a queen—she has the will, the power, to restore her love once more, even with the very banes of her existence living in the same home. 

Thinking that she will find him, talk to him, and he will welcome her into his arms once more, Hera searches the palace for Zeus.

Leto was painful. At the very least, though, Hera maintained her superiority. The titans had little power, after the overthrow of Kronos. Leto was small. Insignificant.

Hera’s entire being feels _aflame_ when she finds Zeus, interlocked with Demeter. 

Persephone is a sweet child, later, and avoids Hera whenever possible. Hera thinks that perhaps the little girl, the one with flowers in her dark braids, can feel the fire in the gaze of the queen of the heavens whenever she looks her way.

Zeus comes to her with wide eyes and expansive apologies. Hera eyes his throat with the viciousness of a carnivore and none of the hunger. She wishes she could trust him. She wishes she could destroy him. He says it will never happen again, and this time, Hera knows it is a lie. 

-

Hera does not discover Zeus’s infidelity again until the bastard child is already born, and she _fumes_. Hermes steals Apollo’s cattle. Hera tells Zeus that she will never forgive him for bringing liars and fucking thieves into her house.

-

Aphrodite emerges, gorgeous and glittering, from the sea, and even Hera admits that she is beautiful. Not more beautiful than Hera herself, of course (as Hera tells herself, to keep her pride). Hermes, bastard child, vies for the lovely goddess’s hand. Hera tells Zeus that he _will_ give Aphrodite’s hand to _her_ son, not the walking mistakes of Zeus’ insatiable need to cause Hera pain. 

She means Ares. Of course she does. Ares is strong, handsome enough, deserving of a good wife, and he and Aphrodite seem besotted with each other already. Ares is the only child that Hera carries any pride for. She thinks she might care for Aphrodite, as a daughter-in-law. Zeus, because he is a bastard and somehow _angry at Hera_ for still being furious with him over his wrongdoings, agrees, and then turns to give Aphrodite’s hand to fucking _Hephaestus_.

Hera screams loud enough that the foundations of the heavens shake. 

-

When Hera finds out about Semele, her anger is not tempered, but it is controlled. The flames burn blue in the pit of her heart. 

Hera hates Zeus. With everything she has. She despises her husband, but can do nothing to him; and so, the only outlets for her flames are the women who sleep with him and the children born of those unions.

Hera is a goddess. She cares not for fairness; cares not for justice. Hera cares for _vengeance_ , now. She is queen of the heavens. She takes what she wants.

Hera appears before the girl Semele and tells her falsehoods, tells her lies. In the form of an old woman, she spins a story of love and devotion between the goddess Hera and her husband Zeus. The king and queen of the gods, she tells Semele, afford each other much attention, and have for millennia. As planned, Semele becomes jealous. Hera tells her to ask Zeus to show himself in his full godhood, to prove his devotion to her.

Later, Semele is burnt to ashes by Zeus’ lightning bolts in his true form. It stings to know that Zeus would show his true form to a mortal girl, though Hera had already suspected as much. Semele’s death does not fill the gaping pit in Hera’s heart as she had violently hoped it would.

The problem should have been solved with Semele’s death. It should have been over with. Done. But Zeus, bastard of bastards, rescues another of his bastard sons and sews him into his leg so that the child might grow. 

This time, after the screaming, Hera tears down the largest palace in Olympus with her bare hands. It is her home—but it is also Zeus’ home, and the home of his bastard children, and she hopes that Zeus _feels_ the scar from the marble slab she’d thrown at his head.

Hera had _done_ _it_ , this time. She’d done it. Killed the mother. The baby was near-dead. It could have been left to die, but _no_ , Hera’s suffering and shame is never-ending and soon the child is grown and taking Hestia’s place, her _sister_ ’s place, as one of the twelve olympians. Hera despises them.

-

Zeus actually has the audacity to bring Ganymede to Olympus as his cupbearer, and Hera _explodes_. The boy is left alive only because Zeus has made him immortal.

-

The only way to keep Zeus from favoring his bastard children, Hera finds, is to rid herself of them entirely. She is a goddess. She cares not for the lives of mortals; cares not for fairness, cares not for justice. She knows that Athena looks down on her for the things that she does. She does not care.

Hera pokes and prods, kills and torments, and it’s never, _never_ enough. She cannot fight Zeus, cannot destroy the rest of her tattered reputation, cannot provoke her husband with the chance that she might _lose_ . She has so much violence in her heart, now, and as much as it was ever borne of jealousy, it is borne of insecurity. At first, Hera was angry at being passed over for these women; torn apart by the fact that she was the goddess of marriage, and could not keep her husband faithful. Now, she is furious that Zeus has the _audacity_ to keep cheating on her, in plain sight or otherwise. Her house is full of his bastards. She despises him with everything that her charred heart has left to give.

The whores are easy to kill. The demigods are not. She sends Heracles, named after her in an attempt to placate her, mad—he kills his entire family, and _still_ he is regarded as a hero, because a son of Zeus, apparently, can do no wrong. 

Hera despises it all. Her crows are her only solace—her anger, her only warmth.

-

Hera’s eye is watchful, now. Hera’s eye is keen. She knows when Zeus has gone missing for longer than he should have—she spots the glow of a god from the window of that princess from miles away.

Another fucking _princess_. Of course. Zeus seems to have a penchant for them.

Zeus appears a moment later, and the glow is still there, but Hera is no idiot. She watches closer. Sends her crows. There are blue roses in the princess’ hair. Hera _screams_.

-

Oh, but it is a rush of emotion to finally discover the princess and her son, after all those years of their hiding. Hera thinks she will _enjoy_ their deaths.

When the demon appears, intriguing and enticingly single-minded, Hera thinks that he will make for an interesting tool.

Directing the wind, Hera sends the cape over to the hiding place of the ruined princess. It is an immense satisfaction to see the bitch _finally_ dead; and killed by her son, no less. The irony is sweet on her lips as she smiles.

The son escapes her grasp. The demon does not. Hera sees an opportunity, in him; in the giants that he reveres, that he owes his life to. She draws him to the cave, and spins him a tale, and eventually, he listens. 

Hera is the goddess of marriage and childhood, not of motherhood, and she has been too consumed by hatred and anger to be a _mother_ through most of the lives of her children. Still, she thinks, as she cups Seraphim’s face in her hands, she’s always been good at masquerading as things she’s not. Happy. Satisfied. Calm. To a boy who’s never known a mother, she thinks that the gentle cradling of his cheeks against her palms might be a believable lie.

Hera has a plan, now. And she intends to enact it.

-

Hera has hated the lying, thieving bastard worst of all, over these millennia. She is nothing less than gratified to finally have a chance to put him down. She feels justified in it, after catching the spying little worm.

She takes Hermes’ gauntlet. She thinks it looks better on her. Hera has always looked finest while adorned in power.

-

Seraphim is unable to kill Heron. Hera needs only to smell the smoldering scent of lightning on him to reason out why. It is unfortunate—and now, Zeus has done what he always does, and taken another broken baby bird up to Olympus to stink up Hera’s halls and promote her shame throughout her domain.

Hera will have her palace back, in due time. She will have all of her domain. All of her heavens. And there will not be a single god there that has displeased her.

-

Hera has never fought Zeus because there might be a chance that she could not win. Now? She is certain that she can.

Zeus has broken his own rules. The gods rally against him, behind Hera—all except for his bastard children, whose support she had not been expecting to begin with. To Zeus, this is a partisan issue—him vs. Hera—and his bastards feel the same way. Hera does, too, of course, but she is scarier when she is angry and she is better at presenting only Zeus’ explicit wrongs and not her personal vendetta.

Hephaestus goes to Zeus, as well. Fine, thinks Hera. She has never wanted him as a son before—she does not want him now. Let him run off and pretend to be a bastard, like the rest of his father’s children. Ares stands close behind her. She tells him that Zeus is no father of his, not any longer; he nods solemnly, and Hera hopes to see his weapon painted with the ichor of Zeus’ children in the coming days.

So, Hera has the support of most of the gods; and now, with the help of poor little Seraphim, victim of the wrongs of Zeus and Men alike, she has the support of the giants. Hera is indestructible. 

She does not need Poseidon; or so she tells herself when he disappears, certainly to defect. Easier to promise away the sea that way, anyways. Poseidon was always too understanding of, too reminiscent of his brother. Hera thinks she sees her own fury reflected in the stormy seas of Amphitrite’s eyes, sometimes.

-

The battle goes so well, until it does not.

There is no catharsis. No relief for the pit in her heart. Everything turns on her. She barely has the wherewithal to curse the Fates, under the brunt of the giant’s attack, and then—there is Zeus, saving her, sacrificing himself for her, dying as she’d wished he would so many times before. 

Hera does not believe him, when he smiles at her as if he’s loved her all along. It matters not how much she wants to.

**Author's Note:**

> semele; a princess, mother of dionysus  
> ganymede; one of zeus' lovers, a young boy (the encouraged way of homosexuality in ancient greece)  
> amphitrite; poseidon's wife, or one of them, at least, and one of the nereids
> 
> hope you liked it! if you did, you could... idk... leave me a comment? i do enjoy hearing what people thought of my writing. 
> 
> you can very likely look forward to a sequel, working title "seraphim is hot and did nothing wrong" because i love him
> 
> in conclusion: i hate zeus and he did not deserve the positive light he got as heron's 'father figure' in the show


End file.
